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Is WordPress as business website a cost effective solution?

Yes, using WordPress for business website is the most cost effective solution, if you are a website designer who knows a little bit extra of PHP coding and SQL scripting language. Or else, it’s going to be a lot more expensive than you think.

From the website design stage to maintenance and operation stage of the website, WordPress costs you more in terms of monetary value, time efforts and continuity of your website ( down time of your website ).

Website Maintenance for Paid or Customized WordPress Theme

Imagine the followings as how WordPress theme maintenance going to be:

WordPress theme that you use for your website has to be updated every time WordPress core is updated.

WordPress theme also has to be updated every time one or more of the plugins you use with your WordPress website is updated.

Whenever WordPress theme is being updated, modification made to the previous version has to be redo again for the new version.

How often the updates happen? The WordPress core will be updated more than once in every 3 months. To protect your website, it has to be updated with the latest core version. The theme and plugins you use need to be updated as well in order for your website to operate properly.

WordPress theme has to be modified during the implementation of new plugin. What’s more even annoying is, there are times whereby existing theme has to be replaced because existing theme doesn’t support the new plugin.

Worst situation is that the theme no longer suit your business requirement ( after plugins have been installed ) and you decided to look for new theme and customize it from the beginning again so that it fits all the new plugins you have chosen for your WordPress website.

Website Maintenance for WordPress Plugins

Imagine again about WordPress plugins maintenance:

WordPress plugin has to be updated every time WordPress core is updated.

Most of the WordPress plugins are not updated on timely basis, therefore, it prevents you from updating the WordPress core and expose your WordPress website to hacking attacks.

Plugin modification done to previous version has to be redo again for new version.

Almost all of the free WordPress plugins are not updated on timely basis, ranging from 3 months to 2 years because the developers are not obligated to provide timely updates.

Plugin updates may result in plugin conflict with another plugin that causes both or more plugins to fail.

Example, let say, you’ve found an outdated plugins that seems no further development ( abandon plugin ) such as Product Catalogue Plugin and you have 1000 items in it, you have no choice but to look for an alternative and updated plugin that compatible with the latest version of WordPress core, so that you can update your WordPress website. Here’s the issue, you have to re-insert all 1000 items again, into the new WordPress Product Catalogue Plugin.

Estimated Cost of Website Maintenance for WordPress Website

Let say, you have a basic WordPress website as your business website which only uses a few plugins such as the followings:

WordPress CMS Core

WordPress Theme – Website Visual

WordPress Page Builder Plugin – Editor

WordPress Form Plugin – Contact Form

Social Media Feature Plugin – Social Media Integration

Gallery / Slides Show Plugin – Photo or Image Gallery

Banner Slider Plugin – Website Banner

SEO Plugin – SEO Enhancement

Security Plugin – Website Security

As an estimation, all of the above needs to be updated, say every 3 months, at different day through the 3 months period. An average of 3 hours needed to maintain and update each plugin and, it costs you approximately USD $ 30 / hour ( Approximately SGD $ 42 / MYR 130 ).

The followings are the breakdown:

9 units ( 1 x Core, 1 x Theme, 7 x Plugins ) items to be maintained

3 hours of maintenance work for each items

USD $ 30 / hour of work

Total website maintenance cost for a basic WordPress website for a duration of 3 Months